


Cat's Cradle

by Kit



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works, Will of the Empress - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Gift Fic, Goldenlake, pride and prejudice - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1036, the way it always is. Four children are nearly lost, the way they always are. A mage, whose gift shows in the discovery of lost things, meets them all, slowly bringing all four to Summersea….or, at least, Niko <i>tries</i>.</p><p>What happens when one of the Circle never reaches Emelan?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Goldenlake's Ficmas exchange

_In the Imperial Palace; Dancruan, Namorn. 1036HE:_

The Hall of the Roses was generally a gay place; fine and bright and informal, fit for smiling.  Now, its brightwork and tile were hidden in still, evening gloom as two women kept as quiet as the air the filled the place. One was young, her body still touched by recent pregnancy and birth; the other older, never so altered.  The younger was circling this elder in a slow, easy circuit, flashes of auburn and bronze showing in the little light the night provided. An empress and her seer. 

Seers are, for the most part, peculiar and unfortunate creatures. Despite her years of amassing all the power she thought she might readily possess, and more, Berenene of Namorn had always been grateful that Sight was not amongst her gifts. Watching the _Vymese_ scowl over a bowl, sweat streaking her unpainted face and lips thinned in concentration, she did not envy Ishabal. She let none of this pity show as she nodded at the woman. “It is true, then? They did not exaggerate?”

Ishabal Ladyhammer straightened clenched shoulders, blinking hard. “The _clehame_ died with her husband, majesty,” she said, voice hoarse. 

Berenene sighed. “Foolish to the last, I’m sure. Their child?”

The mage swallowed, running a quick hand across bloodshot eyes. “Well hidden,” she said. “She was _well_ hidden, and apparently untouched by the disease. She seems to possess a great deal of—”

“—what, Isha? Luck?”

“Magic, your majesty.”

Berenene paused. “No one ever reported of this. Amiliane would have been delighted. All the better to make a pet of her at parties.”

Ishabal smiled briefly. “Ambient gifts, I have heard, appear more subtly than the general sort. I am not sure how powerful a mage she is—only that she _must_ be one, given the man who has uncovered her.”

The empress sighed. “For someone who used to inform us that you’d had your sense of humour surgically removed at birth, _Vymese,_ you tease sorely. “ _Who_ uncovered her?

In answer, Ishabal turned back to the scrying bowl, beckoning with little care or patience. “Your majesty.”

Berenene closed her eyes, schooling away irritation, and then bent her own head, squinting in the bright, somehow thick waters before her, and allowing the mage to lay one bent, heavy hand upon her upper arm.

 

( _Zakdin—capital of Hatar. Hot blue skies, bleached near-white in places like weak points in poor, stretched cloth. Black tiles throwing back the heat. Bodies and bags and cleaning crews. Crows, and a clamorous sort of quiet. There might be one clean house in the whole dying city, all winding stairs and eye-smarting with its coats of fresh lime.  A man climbs those stairs. He climbs them briskly, grey silks moving comfortably across his long body, a horsetail of coarse, black-and-silver hair falling down his back. He is focussed. Concerned. Easy to see that, in the line of his shoulders, the small, strong clench and unclench of his hands and jaw._

 _His gaze, when he opens a top-level door, is drawn to a small, still lump in a clean bed. The room as dark—deliberately so, with boards over the windows and muslin draping half the room—but to the man’s eyes this figure is outlined in a faint, steady silver that is reaching slowly into the bedclothes like roots in soil.  
_

 _“Sandry?” His voice, though soft, is deep._

 _“Niko? Is that you?” This voice is small, and shaking, but Berenene hears something familiar in the way it slowly collects the broken bits of itself, trying to twist them into firmness. “Bother. I must have been asleep again. I didn’t know you’d left_.” _The figure stirs, slowly uncurling and sitting up, though one small, nail-bitten hand obscures her face. Strands of light hair hang limp past her shoulders.  “Niko,” she says. “When can we leave this place?”  
_

 _This Niko sighs, moving to the bed. Berenene is not sure what else she senses in him. Patience with the girl, certainly, but somehow too a great_ impatience _with everything else. An urgency kept in careful check before someone who could not be more than ten._

 _“Soon, I hope.” He is not soothing, sitting on the edge of the child’s bed as if it he is unsure how to fold his body into the space.  “But not until you are well enough to travel.”_

 _Sandrilene fa Toren clenches her jaw, unable to suppress a little gasp as she lets her hand fall from her eyes and tries to force eyes that have been gummed tight. A small rip; eyelashes left on her cheek, and a slit of bright, watering blue eye can be seen. “I can travel.”_

 _“Until, my lady, you can travel_ well _.” He sighs, watching the girl deflate against pillows. “We should, even at the worst, reach Emelan and your uncle by spring.”)_

Berenene blinked, pulling away from Ishabal and taking in the woman and her scrying bowl.

“No,” she said. “ _That_ won’t do at all.”

***

 _Imperial Palace; Dancruan, Namorn. 1043HE_

 _Clehame_ Sandrilene fa Toren walked away from the linen cupboards on quiet feet, dust-blue skirts brushing against hallways that grew progressively lighter and grander the farther she went. The light changed; the warm, flickering softness of candles and lamps shifting into cut-glass streaks that dazzled the eye, her steps growing more muffled as her way was filled with beautiful, useless things

As she made the step from a wooden floor onto new, lapis mosaic, Sandry felt a hand close about her elbow. She sighed.  

“My dear,” said the empress. “Isha is _furious_.”

Sandry flushed, looking up the nagging distance into her cousin’s face. “Furious enough that _you_ would—?”

 

“Oh no.” Berenene laughed, tapping Sandry’s cheek with two fingers, light and sharp. “Even Ishabal Ladyhammer cannot render me an errand girl, lady Sandrilene. I just wanted to see if it were true.”

Sandry stiffened. “Your Majesty,” she said, her voice soft and tight, barely reaching the ears of the other ladies who stood, all uncertain eyes and smiles, a little behind their Empress. “I _am_ Mistress of the Wardrobe. If I have given offence—”

“— _Sandry_ , hush.” Berenene flapped a hand, dismissive. “So long as your magic continues to serve us and our people, what do _I_ care if you must play about with fabric scraps to feel you are doing it right?” She smiled; a dimple sharp in her left cheek. “Isha _is_ furious, though. Something I am sure she shall take up with you before too long. Walk with me.”

 Turning, one hand still light on Sandry’s arm, careless of entourage, Berenene dor Ocmore, Empress of all Namorn, led her younger cousin out of the realms of weavings and stores and into more civilised rooms, blowing a kiss at the lock.

***

“You’ve considered Emelan.”

It was not a question.

 Sandry, turning her back to one of the splendid garden views that spilled into Berenene’s office, nodded slowly. “It would be… wrong not to,” she said. “Uncle sounded most urgent in his letters.”

“No doubt.” The Empress considered her, head tilted a little to the side. “Urgent and old, as we all know Vedris is. He is not likely to pick you, you know.”

 _And who, exactly, made sure of_ that _?_ Sandry did not sigh as the Empress continued, ruminative, fingers tapping her desk. Apple wood, polished warm and its scent still a light, quiet breath when you least expected it. Sandry had been with her when the old, dying tree had been cut down.  

“But there are connections to be formed there, if we play things correctly. Magical, mercantile.” She smiled. “Yes. And you would make _such_ an ornament to that dreary Citadel.”

Sandry sniffed. “If I went, it would be for Uncle,” she said. “ _And_ to remove myself from the danger of marriage.”

Berenene snorted. “Oh, little innocent,” she murmured. “You think you will be safe there?”

“From _abduction_ —”

“—It is a truth universally acknowledged,” said the empress, eyes growing stony in her vivid face, “That a single woman in possession of good fortune must be in want of a husband.”

 

***

 _Summersea; Emelan: 1043HE_

 

Earthquake; pirate siege; forest fire; plague. All of these things shape a city, its people and its streets buckling and shifting about, forming walls inside of walls and thornier gates with each new disaster. Briar Moss, his stall set up and his miniature trees arrayed about him in the rush and shouting of the new, triangle-shaped Market Square, admired his adopted city and its toughness. He could still remember when the old Market and sunk in on itself, and he and Rosethorn had run about trailing burn ointment and bandages.

 _Though,_ he thought wryly, running his fingers across the small, perfect fan of leaves offered up by a Yanjing Plum, “ _Still-remembering” takes all day, and your purse won’t think you for it_. He shook his head, clearing it of Rosethorn’s hacking breath in the smoke, and how that whole first year had _wept_ burn ointment and bandages, until in the last month; then there had been no Lark to weave them.  

Well. Mostly clearing it. Thinking of Dedicate Lark was never a good start to the day. He did not remember her face—only a willowy shape and sweet voice, now, and those eight-years-blurred all about him—but he remembered the look on Rosethorn’s when she had woken, mute, from a pox death, and found that her friend had taken her place. And he had seen, almost every day after that, the absence Lark—quiet Lark; no one’s particular teacher and everyone’s special friend—had left in their home.  

 _Remembering the dead is one thing. Going into orgies over them is another, as Daja says._ Briar smiled, thinking of his sister and friend. Most ends of the week, she’d be at a stall opposite him, matching his trees with her metal ones, and taunting him by wearing all the _kaqs_ to bit-prices. Though her bargains could _always_ be tighter, according to Tris.

“Excuse me! _Excuse_ me, sir.”

Briar blinked, taking in the rather querulous old noble who was blocking the morning sun, his eyes fixed upon the plum _shakkan_.

“Beautiful, isn’t she? Fit for the best gardens, my lord.” The green mage felt a smile light his face, as the day’s business began.

 ***

The plum; three larches; and a lovely little almond later, Briar was satisfied. A fine start to the new year, this, even if there were some mages who looked down on folk who were meant to be better than market sellers. Tris never let that sort into the house. It was a rule she kept on the wall. Briar grinned, thinking of it; running a hand through his close-cropped black hair and watching the evening light deepen and drip like molten brass. The air was thick with good smells. His plants, of course, but overlaid by supper-wares; onions friend with eggplant, carrots and spitted meat; warming bread.  

He could see much of his own enjoyment spread across a girl’s face. Some little scrap from a noble’s suit, dressed in fine blue and silver to match her bright eyes. The clothing was all high-collared, tight-waisted Narmornese splendour, and her face could belong anywhere from here to Dancruan, so long as it was kept in the shade. Her hair was done up in cunning braids that Tris might envy— _blast girls and their making me notice this silliness_ —and he did admire the liveliness of the face and figure, but her nose made sure that no one could ever take her seriously as long as she lived.

She was no local. Her stance was too open. And it had taken a minute—maybe less—for fingers to sneak up towards her purse.

Briar sighed. Fleet should know better than to try such a lazy, open snatch when he was looking on. The urchin was about as subtle as midmorning bells.

The mage got to his feet.

***

Emelan was altered.

Of _course,_ Emelan was altered from her father’s home and uncle’s city. The year Sandry had been found by Niklaren Goldeye, and taken to Namorn by Ishabal, Emelan—and Summersea and particular, all the way to the Winding Circle Temple—had suffered massive damage from an earthquake, rumoured to be enhanced by foolish magic. This had left the ports open to pirates, and the open country to fire. She had known all this; had read Vedris’s letters throughout the plague, and been glad—selfishly glad—to be spared another pox after the one that had killed her parents. Niko, all those years ago, had been about to lead her into disaster. And he had not even known it.   

Still, seeing three narrow streets in one place, when remembered a single wide on, or looking at the ravaged Old Temple and the still-raw timbers of the New, while her uncle’s scorched Citadel had sat grimly looking on, had been strange indeed. And she could not shake the feeling that, perhaps, if she had been there, something might be different. _Uncle would say taking too much responsibility with is a dangerous habit_ , she thought. _Though surely it can’t be as bad as taking none at all._

The Market Square—though there nothing remotely quadratic about the place, as far as she could see—had done a lot to lift her mood. She imagined the ladies back home, their perfect eyebrows raised at the sight their wealthiest _clehame_ wandering foreign streets with only asingle guard, currently occupied at some distance by sleeves that kept sewing themselves shut.  But no one would accost her here.

A man’s arms hooked about her waist and she was pressed against a wall, with room for half a gasp before she was quite thoroughly kissed. She smelled sage and geranium and rosemary, and felt his laughter thrum through them both as she caught a motion from his other hand, and a shadow scurried away. Sandry closed her eyes, forming a pattern in her mind.

And then she bit.

***

Briar didn’t have time to enjoy Fleet’s escape, or the pretty woman’s fluster. He yelped as his arms were yanked up behind him in a painful shoulder lock. Not guard’s work, but, somehow, his own clothes. The fabric rippled and bit, pulling him away from the young noble. His shirt bound him, and he could feel cuts opening in his skin— _cuts_ , where trouser and shirt seams normally lay, and his blood seeping into the fabric weave and sticking like the best kind of bandage. It was growing hard to breathe.

“ _Don’t_ ,” the girl panted, a small, deadly smile lurking about her face, “Steal kisses, tradesman.”

This might be the most unsettling display of magic since Tris made New Year decorations out of lightning, but he could play, too. Sensing his bound state, his rapid heartbeat, all the dense growth that matted even this overrun part of Summersea was clamouring to help him. He grinned, no matter how his shoulders felt close to dislocating, as the noble girl’s face slackened with surprise when vines from roof gardens and window boxes, when the plants that scurried up through cracks in the street, all ran riot together and snatched at her ankles. She fell atop him the air between them sickly with jasmine that, in its eagerness to help, couldn’t help but bloom.

“Noted, Duchess,” he said, managing a shaky grin. “But I’m _just_ the mage you are.”  

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Briar's sisters try to knock some sense into him.

In the tall, narrow house he shared with his sisters, Briar groaned, forehead thudding gently against the pale, scrubbed wood of the kitchen table. Tris, chopping something ferociously at the other end of it, snorted.  
  
“You know,” he said, ruffled. “You girls could do more for a man’s ego.”   
  
“Your ego tells you to kiss complete strangers,” Tris returned. “It could do with some quashing.”   
  
Briar winced. “She was about to be lifted!”   
  
“So you _kissed_ her?”   
  
“...I—”  
  
“You. Kissed. Her.” Tris shook her head. “I thought Rosethorn had taught you not to just run around doing that.”   
  
“She probably did,” Daja drawled, coming in through their back door and washing streaked hands in the sink. “Briar just probably thought it only applied to _her_. Or you.”   
  
“Oh, honestly.”   
  
Briar glared at the pair of them. “Would you two _stop it_ —”  
  
“—No, thief boy.” Daja let one hand fall solidly to his shoulder. “We won’t. You shouldn’t do that to _any_ woman.” the smith made a face. “And you just happened to pick one with bodyguards. A _mage_ with body guards.”   
  
Briar winced, but couldn’t help a slow, wondering smile. “That was something. Who knew anyone so small could just— _do_ that?”  
  
“Best you?”   
  
Briar shrugged. “That she did. But it wasn’t like I lay down and made it easy.”   
  
Tris sighed. “It would have been easier if you had—”  
  
“—oh, hush, _saati_.” Daja grinned. “It’s a good thing for Briar you can sweettalk His Grace so well.”   
  
Tris, flushing to match her hair, glowered at the pair of them. “It’s hardly _my_ fault that I’m the only respectable one among us.”   
  
***  
  
“Uncle, who _was_ that man?”  
  
Vedris, Duke of Emelan, surveyed his grandniece over the breakfast table, had a head full of figures and rights; legislative wrangling, the healer’s infuriating rites; taxes, and a longstanding correspondence with his youngest son that was not going to end well. It took him some time to return to the young, adopted citizen who had spent half the day before in the Ducal cells. He sighed.   
  
“Briar Moss,” he said, watching Sandry shred a roll in quick, nervous fingers. “One of the city’s plant mages, and highly gifted. Temple educated, as you would have been.”   
  
Sandry winced, though she could see no disapprobation in the older man’s serious face. “He is also a boor.”   
  
“I have it on very good authority, my dear, that should he attempt any such thing again, he’ll be hung by the ankles in the nearest well.” Vedris smiled faintly. “And he would not fight it, since along with his considerable gifts—”  
  
“—considerable? Uncle! I had him tied up!”  
  
“— _Along_ with these, he has two formidable foster sisters.” The Duke shook his head. “Without them, the city would not have survived in its current shape, or any other.”   
  
Sandry’s eyes widened. “The Year of Sorrows? But they would have been no more than children! Like—like me.”   
  
Reaching across the table, Vedris touched her hand. “They were fortunate in their teachers.”   
  
Sandry flushed. “So was I,” she said.   
  
“I do not doubt it, my dear.” Vedris did not quite smile. “Not when every other report receive from Namorn describes a c _lehame_ who can weave pure magic.”   
  
Sandry looked at her plate, still tearing the shreds of her breakfast into smaller and smaller pieces.   
  
“You must suffer your guards,” said the Duke, suddenly. “I do not think I have been able to say how glad I am to see you here, Sandrilene.”   
  
***  
  
It was stupid.   
  
There was no need to return to the market. No need for trouble, with or without the assistance of a glowering guard at her shoulder. The man—the boy—this ‘Briar Moss’—would only annoy her if she saw him, Sandry was sure. Her face burned, remembering the kiss. His eyes had laughed at her, even when his mouth was occupied.   
  
He had, she thought, unreasonably fine eyes.   
  
_Cat dirt._ Vexed, Sandry looked around Market Square, eyes catching briefly on fabric stalls and someone who seemed to be selling particularly lovely samples of mother-of-pearl, and shook her head as she found she did not even see the plant mage or his work.   
  
“If you’re looking for Briar, _viymese_ , he has temple work each Firesday.” A low, slightly husky voice caught her from the side. Sandry turned to see a tall, dark-skinned woman leaning against a table laden with gold, iron, and brass. Her accent on the Narmonese title was perfect, and a smile seemed tucked into the corners of her full lips. “Are you his Duchess?”   
  
Sandry, years of training stiffening her back, swallowed a splutter. “Since he was the one who had to be cut away from the road and dragged to my uncle’s dungeons,” she said, “I think he’s _my_ dupe.”   
  
The woman raised her eyebrows, but held out a hand. “I’m Daja,” she said. “Daja Kisubo. He’s my brother.”   
  
“You have my condolences.”  
  
Daja Kisubo’s brows remained near her hairline. “Oh, he’s not so bad. “  
  
Sandry shrugged, weary of him. “I’ll say no more. My Uncle did mention foster sisters.”   
  
“Did he?” Daja shook her head, smiling. “We’ve caused him a lot of trouble over the years, with the best intentions.”   
  
Sandry, unsure what to make of this, reached out to touch delicate, gold filigree. “This is _lovely_.”   
  
“Would you like it?”   
  
“Oh. No—I couldn’t—”  
  
“—it’ll be one gold maja, my lady.” Daja grinned, wicked, as Sandry blushed furiously.   
  
“That’s _outrageous_.”   
  
Daja shrugged. “It’s trade.”   
  
“Kisubo,” Sandry muttered. “I _thought_ I recognised the name. I also thought Traders refused to bargain with lowly _kaqs_.” The girl paused, taking in the long, ebony staff that lay a little distance from Daja, propped against the table. Its cap was brass, and mirror smooth. She could see an edge of Daja’s reflection in it, and the image stiffened as Sandry’s gaze lingered a little too long.   
  
“I am not,” said Daja Kisubo, “A very _good_ Trader.”   
  
***  
Dedicate Crane often looked like some peculiar combination of his namesake and an offended cat, but the whole ruffled, long-limbed lot of him seemed apoplectic as Briar stuck his head around Winding Circle’s Greenhouse door.   
  
“Heard some news, old man?”   
  
“You have… _manhandled_ a countess. The wealthiest heiress in all Namorn and our own Duke’s only great-niece.   
  
Briar groaned. “Would it have been just fine by you if she’d been a chambermaid?”   
  
“ _Briar_.”   
  
“Lakik, gossip runs uphill to his place.” Briar addressed this to a young tomato plant, whose feathery leaves her currently trying to investigate his ankle. “Enough of that, please. His lordship’s already tetchy.”   
  
The noise from the back of Crane’s throat could have soured milk. “I know you find it comfortable in gaol,” he drawled, “But this really is too much.”   
  
“Crane.” A new voice, this. It was blurred—some called it barely comprehensible, these days—but it was waspish still, and dearer to Briar’s heart than seasonal rain in just the right place for new growth. “Half the week, your _tea_ is too much for you.”   
  
Dedicate Rosethorn, scowling in the thick, green-tinted heat of the greenhouse, stepped up to the two men, pushing silvered chestnut hair out of her eyes.   
  
The Air Dedicate sniffed. “It is so often badly prepared.”   
  
Rosethorn ignored him, turning to Briar and laying a small hand on his arm. “If you see that girl again, you are going to apologise.”   
  
Briar flushed. Rosethorn, he knew, would look at her with disappointment in her lovely, dark eyes no matter if he’d upset a powerful mage, countess, or chambermaid. Looking at her face, he remembered the small, horrified sound the lady Sandrilene had made in the back of her throat; the brief fear that had been replaced with sharp, rather glorious anger; her body tense and unwilling under his hands. But there had been resignation as well as speed in her reaction. He wondered at it, and felt small.   
  
“Yes, Rosethorn.”   
  
“You’re also going to invite her to see me.”   
  
“ _What?”_  
  
“Never you mind, boy. Just make sure it happens, if you see her again.”   
  
Brair, staring at his teacher—who barely left temple grounds now he was big enough to fend for himself—could fathom none of this, at all. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandry feels misplaced amongst Berenene's schemes.

The Duke had never been fond of balls. Sandry knew this, but the bold, harsh lines of the Citadel’s Great Hall, barely softened by candlelight and the finery of its inhabitants, were still shocking. Berenene had tea parties grander than this.   
  
_You_ , Sandry thought to herself, hands twisting the folds of her rose coloured skirts, _**are a snob**._   
  
Berenene, she knew, expected Sandry to be in the thick of things.   


Her cousins were not a demonstrative lot; Franzen stood by his tiny, sharp-faced wife, his whole body tensed as Gospard spoke to their father. The older brother had shoulders almost as broad as her uncle’s, and his features were amiable enough, but Berenene had once told Sandry that he had tried to drown his younger brother off Bit Island. _Made it look like an accident, as is only proper_. Sandry’s thoughts took on her cousin’s easy, teasing inflections as she went over an old memory. _And no one would believe Franzen over him—not when he is_ so much _the younger brother, and with a face like **that**. _  
  
Franzen’s unfortunate face was fixed on the Duke, who did not quite smile. A muscle twitched in Franzen’s jaw, his wife— _Virena_ , Sandry recalled—curling her hand beneath his arm in a calming gesture. Vedris, face impassive in the flickering light, seemed immune to it all.   
  
Vedris, bowing to them all, left the room.   
  
_Berenene_ , Sandry thought, _has misplaced her schemes._  
  
“I didn’t think you’d be the sort to lurk, _viymese_.”   
  
The voice was low, sardonic, and familiar even in an unexpected tongue. Turning, Sandry looked up into the face of the smiling Trader she had seen at Market Square—resplendent, now, in oranges and coppers that caught what there was in the room and warmed it about herself. She spoke Narmonese like a local.   
  
Sandry sniffed. “Mage duties instead of trading ones, Daja Kisubo?”   
  
“I like you,” said the other woman, easily slipping back into Kurchali. “You obviously do your reading. Tris would appreciate that, too. _She’s_ lurking by the library. Much more true to type.”   
  
“I am not,” Sandry said, stiffly. “Lurking. I am observing.”   
  
“A termite hill. Collapsing.”   
  
Sandry tried not to smile. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”   
  
“Now, see here.” Daja’s back stiffened, and Sandry swallowed a squeak of surprise as Franzen, unaccompanied and apparently very quiet on his feet, stepped between them. “You should not be bothering my cousin, Trader.”   
  
Daja sighed. “See, that’s a _mistake_ people make, my lord,” she said slowly, sounding for all the world like that her fool of a foster brother—all wicked drawl. “Thinking I care about such things. Unless the lady is bothered. Are you bothered, Sandrilene?”   
  
Her cousin, Sandry noticed, looked apoplectic. And there was a deep, warm amusement in Daja’s widened eyes that made it hard for the other girl not to grin. No one ever teased like this at home.   
  
“Not by you, _viymese_ ,” she said, demure. “You speak Narmornese beautifully, by the way.”   
  
“Thank you—”  
  
“— _Trangshi_ filth. Enough of this.”   
  
Sandry did gasp. The whole room, previously thick with other voices, seemed to pause for breath. Franzen’s words echoed against glasses, and seemed to trickle into the spaces between the Duke’s guests, cold and uncomfortable and sly. Daja’s hands tightened around her staff.   
  
The Countess faced her cousin. “You,” she said, “Have been _abominably_ rude. I am ashamed of you.”   
  
Franzen flushed. “You’ve hardly spent enough time with us for a right to shame,” he said, voice clipped. “Coming here, after all these years, after his Grace my father has been so ill.” He shook his head. “Very devout of you, I’m sure.”   
  
“You _dare_ \--”   
  
“Ah, what’s this, Yer Lordship.” Another new voice, even more unwelcome. Sandry glowered as Briar Moss stepped into their small, embarrassing huddle, his hand resting briefly on Daja’s arm as he passed through. “Talking as if anyone else is any different?” Briar grinned at them all, teeth very white, his green eyes sparkling in his flushed, dark face. “When it comes to Duke Vedris, you’re all carrion crows.”  
  
“I do _not_ ,” Sandry whispered, “Need your help.”   
  
“Good,” Briar snapped. “Because I ain’t giving it to you. Just standing with my sister, here, against your idiot relative.”   
  
Daja smiled wanly. “I could have managed, you know.”   
  
“Oh, I know, Daj.” Briar said, smiling. “I was just bored.”   
  
Franzen glared at the sibling-mages. “Even you could be whipped,” he said.   
  
“You could _try_ , Franzen fer Toren.” Sandry stepped in front of them, hands clasped and letting her cousin’s seams bite, just a little.   
  
***  
  
“That went well.”   
  
Briar Moss smiled, looking up at the cloud-streaked sky, Summersea’s buildings a deep blue grey in the night. Daja snorted.   
  
Sandry, flushed, glared at them both. “I don’t know that _anything_ could be well from all that,” she said.   
  
“What, you mean you don’t usually get thrown out of your own parties?” Briar smiled. “That’s _boring_.”   
  
The Duke had not condescended to come down to the gathering again, but Erdogun, ever the faithful steward, had noticed the commotion and encouraged its end. With emphasis.  
  
“I was not thrown out,” Sandry said. “I chose to follow you.”   
  
Briar bowed. “The honour shall keep me awake all night.”  


Winds stirred, making Sandry shiver and look around for their source, pulling a wrap about her shoulders.   
  
A short, red-haired woman walked up to them, breathless and glowering. “You,” she said, “Are an ass.”   
  
Briar sighed. “Duchess,” he said. “Meet Tris. She’s the reason I’m not scared of you.” .   
  
  
---


End file.
